Adobe Acrobat - How To Create Accessible Adobe® PDF Files Booklet

About Adobe PDF
Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) is standard for electronic document distribution worldwide. Adobe PDF is a universal file format that preserves the exact look and feel of any source document, including all of the fonts, formatting, colors, and graphics, regardless of the application and platform used to create it. Adobe PDF files can be opened reliably across a broad range of hardware and software with the free Adobe Reader® software. You can convert any electronic document or Web page to Adobe PDF using Adobe Acrobat 5.0 software, and any scanned page to searchable Adobe PDF using Adobe Acrobat Capture 3.0 software.

Adobe PDF is a standard on the World Wide Web and is also used to distribute electronic documents over corporate networks, via e-mail, and on CD-ROM. Many corporations, educational institutions, and government agencies use Adobe PDF to distribute documents to the public or to groups within their organizations. Adobe PDF is also gaining tremendous popularity as the basis for new e-business and e-government processes. Its support for electronic forms, digital signatures, password security, and electronic mark-ups make it the ideal platform for converting yesterday's paper-based business processes to fully inter-active digital processes.

Authoring for accessibility
Whether you're publishing a document in HTML, Adobe PDF, or some other format, creating accessible documents requires much more than simply representing the original document accurately. Sighted people can look at a printed page and easily discern the difference between titles, subtitles, columns of text, headers, footers, and so on. Visual clues, such as location of the text on the page, bold text, and large font sizes help them determine the structure of a document so they can read and navigate it easily.

Unfortunately, assistive technologies such as screen readers can't depend on these visual clues. They must instead rely on the underlying computer-based information to provide that same structure. As a result, making documents accessible depends on two things:

Authoring the original documents so that they contain not just content (such as the text in the document) but also information about the structure of the content (such as how the text flows within the page and from page to page).
Using publishing tools such as Adobe Acrobat software and Adobe PDF technology that can retain and encode both the content and the structure so that it can be interpreted by assistive technology.

Authors need to be aware of the importance of writing with the intent of creating accessible documents, and how to accomplish that.
Authoring and publishing tools can be enhanced to help authors create accessible documents.

These same requirements apply to any type of publishing environment, regardless of the file format or application. If you want to make it possible for people with screen readers to navigate documents correctly, the underlying structural information must be present.

Adobe Acrobat 5.0 software provides a number of capabilities that improve access for disabled users. In particular, it:

Creates tagged Adobe PDF files when converting Microsoft Office 2000 files to Adobe PDF, making it easier for people who use screen reader software to navigate a document in the proper reading order.
Converts new and existing PDF files to tagged Adobe PDF files with the optional MakeAccessible plug-in.
Includes tools to help troubleshoot and optimize Adobe PDF files for accessibility, including the accessibility checker, the Tags palette, and more.
Supports the Microsoft® Active Accessibility (MSAA) Application Programming Interface (API) for the Windows platform for integration with assistive technology products, including screen readers from vendors such as GW Micro and Freedom Scientific.
Provides usability enhancements, including enhanced keyboard shortcuts, support for high-contrast viewing, and the ability to zoom in and reflow text on the screen.

Adobe Acrobat Capture 3.0, meanwhile, is a powerful, flexible tool that lets you convert paper-based documents into accessible Adobe PDF files. This software:

Retains the exact look and feel of the original document while embedding a layer of searchable, accessible text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Lets you review and fix suspect text quickly and easily with the QuickFix tool.
Eliminates random text by letting you pre-select areas of the page to treat as text or graphics.
Adds hyperlinks and bookmarks automatically so users can easily navigate tables of contents, indexes, and more.
Creates tagged Adobe PDF files when converting paper documents through use of the optional Tag Adobe PDF agent.